Mr. Speaker, Send Your Guns South

Receive the latest prop-zero updates in your inbox

I’ve been thinking about two seemingly unrelated California news items from different ends of the state.

1. In Sacramento, Speaker John Perez has authorized the arming of security staff in the state Assembly.

2. In Los Angeles, the Dodgers are coming under criticism for failing to provide adequate security, after a beating in the stadium parking lot left a visiting San Francisco Giants fan in a coma.

You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?

Speaker Perez should send those guns – and security aides – to his hometown of LA to help out the Dodgers.

You need security where people are – and while tens of thousands of fans flock to Dodger Stadium, the Assembly doesn’t have many fans. In fact, there’s almost no one there to protect. The California State Assembly has only 80 members—proportionally, that means it’s the smallest lower house of any American legislature by a huge margin.

And the Assembly doesn’t really have that much power. Which is why you never see thousands of people descend on the body to disrupt it, as we saw in the Wisconsin legislature. There’d be no point in such civil disobedience, because the legislature has so little power. California’s system of budget rules and formulas govern the big decisions, not the actual legislators.